Born in New Salem, Massachusetts, on January 3, 1824, Sophia Packard attended local district school and from the age of fourteen alternated periods of study with periods of teaching in rural schools. In 1850 she graduated from the Female Seminary of Charlestown, Massachusetts, and after teaching there for a year and in schools on Cape Cod for four years she became preceptress and a teacher in the New Salem Academy in 1855. A year later she moved to Orange, Massachusetts, where she taught for three years, and after a short-lived attempt to operate her own school in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in partnership with her long-time companion, Harriet E. Giles, she taught at the Connecticut Literary Institution in Suffield, Connecticut, from 1859 to 1864. From 1864 to 1867 she was co-principal of the Oread Collegiate Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. She then moved to Boston, where, after a time employed in an insurance company, she secured in 1870 the unusual position of pastor╒s assistant under the Reverend George C. Lorimer of the Shawmut Avenue Baptist Church and later of the Tremont Temple. In 1877 she presided over the organizing meeting of the Woman╒s American Baptist Home Mission Society, of which she was chosen treasurer that year and corresponding secretary the next.
In 1880 Packard toured the South to determine what form of assistance to the African-American population would be most useful. She concluded to open a school for African-American women and girls in Georgia. After persuading the Woman╒s American Baptist Home Mission Society to provide support, she moved to Atlanta in April 1881 and, with Giles, opened a school in a church basement. Within a few months enrollment at the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary increased from 11 to 80, and by the next February it reached 150. In addition to teaching in the school the two women also held prayer meetings, conducted Sunday schools, and taught sewing classes. The American Baptist Home Mission Society (parent of the women╒s society) made a down payment on a permanent site for the school in 1882, and early in 1883 the school moved to its new home. The balance owing was paid in 1884 by John D. Rockefeller, who was impressed by an address of Packard╒s in Cleveland, and the school was named Spelman Seminary in honor of his wife and her parents. Rockefeller Hall, with offices, a chapel, and dormitory rooms, was built in 1886, and Packard Hall was erected in 1888. With the granting of a state charter in the latter year Packard became treasurer of the board of trustees. She continued in that post and as president of the school until her death on June 21, 1891, in Washington, D.C. At that time Spelman Seminary numbered 464 students and a faculty of 34. Giles succeeded her as president. Spelman Seminary became Spelman College in 1924, and in 1929 it affiliated, along with Morehouse College, with Atlanta University.
